Thanks for the update! I'll be looking out for those 100W equivalent bulbs.

Question: would that mean I could put one of those bulbs in a lamp previously only rated for 60W?

I don't see why not, the heat output and current draw of the LEDs is so much lower than incandescents.

Almost all my LED replacements have been with a higher rated lamp. I replaced all my 35W downlights with 50W equivalent ones for example (they were 6W LEDs).

Funny enough the drivers on my Orluna lamps run hotter than the lamps themselves. A friend of mine brought round his thermal imaging camera, can't remember the temperature but they were quite hot.

I'm of the same mind as Andy. The 60W was referring to the energy consumption and assumed an incandescent bulb and it high (90% to 95%) heat output. A 100W equivalent LED bulb will still put out a lot less heat.
If only bulb makers listed BTUs output

I'm really impressed by the light the 60W equivalents put out, and will probably look to the 100W for our living room where we only have one fixture that isn't putting out enough light with the 75W equivalent CFL that's in there now.

Ooo, this is a good reminder I need to swap out bulbs in my new place. The bathroom has 7 60w bulbs. It's actually more economical and efficient for me to turn on the sun lamp in there instead of the vanity lighting.

Anyone seen issue with LED bulbs and highly humid areas? Debating between LED bulbs I could use elsewhere in future residences, or just CFL for this particular issue.

Apparently the answer is not the obvious one. See this EDN.COM article

Yeah, no problem agreeing with that.

I have replaced some totally-enclosed fixtures with more open ones just so I can use modern bulbs in them. Even the horrid CFLs we have need open enclosures to keep working reliably indoors.

Our experience here with CFLs differs considerably from the "reliable" descriptions of the quoted article. They've simply been terrible, with very short lifespans of only 1-3 years. Cheapies as well as pricies.

Incandescents last 10-20 years for us, and the "wasted heat" from them is not at all wasted in this climate, at least not from the indoor fixtures.

Dunno yet about LED lifespans. Outdoors, in the winter, the LEDs win hands down in the totally enclosed "jam jar" fixtures. But come summer heat, we'll see how they do.

Is airflow the only thing determining the maximum supported wattage of lighting fixtures? I'm curious - I don't know anything about this kind of thing...

The thing determining it is the danger of overheating -- so paper or wood lampshades tend to come with a lower rating than glass or metal ones. An LED bulb will heat its surroundings according to its actual mains power consumption, not its "incandescent equivalent wattage", so an LED with 20W draw and 100W equivalent shouldn't be a fire hazard in a "max 60W" fitment -- but with LEDs there's the extra consideration that the bulb itself has a reduced lifespan if it overheats itself, which basically doesn't happen to incandescents.

Peter

Very well stated!

With regard to LED lifespan, the Cree LR6 downlights I bought 3.5 years ago are still running perfectly. Not a single failure. You can see that they took heat dissipation seriously in their design.


I also have a bunch of Philips 60W A19-style bulbs, and have similarly experienced no failures, no issues. They're all in fixtures with relatively good airflow.

So far as I can tell, LED bulbs are already amazing and with the falling costs and increasing brightness per watt, are ready to completely own the market. What I'm waiting for are for more fixtures to come out with built-in LEDs, intended to last for the life of the fixture. Since any metal light fixture might just as well be engineered to be the heat sink for the LEDs, this isn't all that far fetched. There are a handful of such fixtures on the market, but primary focused on commercial applications, street lights, etc.

Fantastic! Very helpful, Peter. That's exactly what I was looking for.


One day I'm going to have to think about those. We have a TON of recessed lights in our house, so it would be a significant investment to replace all of them, but I'd imagine there would be pretty great cost savings. Although, most of ours are dimmed most of the time they're on, so there's a little savings there. How is the light from the LR6? Like their regular bulbs?


I can see your point, but I think there will always be a place for replaceable bulbs. Some lighting fixtures can get very expensive, and even though the bulbs will last a decade, you might not want to throw the lamp away just because the bulb died. Plus, people might like bulbs with different color temperatures, or they might want to throw their money away on a Philips Hue (Sorry, couldn't resist)

How does a dimmer work? With my minute knowledge of electrical stuff, I imagine (almost certainly incorrectly) that a dimmer is a big resistor that dissipates as heat the energy that would otherwise make the light brighter, so there would be no net savings.

So... how do dimmers really work?

tanstaafl.

Overly simplified, an AC dimmer switch divides the incoming power flow into slices. As you turn the dial 'up' the slices that are allowed to pass through to the lamp become wider. At full brightness the adjacent (in time) power slices are close to 100%

Turning the dimmer dial towards more dim delivers narrower time slices of power flow with proportionally larger time segments of 'no power flow'. The unneeded power is not wasted, it simply does not flow at all.

This is electronically akin to very rapidly (120 times per second in USA and Mexico) flipping a light switch on and off. Adjusting the ratio of on time to off time changes the amount of average power arriving at the lamp.

There is some modest inefficiency in the electronics doing this rapid power switching, which is why a 'dimmer switch' gets mildly warm. Better quality electronics within the dimmer can reduce the amount of waste heat.

Getting more technical, the dimmer cuts slices away from each half cycle of the incoming alternating voltage sine wave. For an inexpensive dimmer the resulting waveform delivered to the lamp is a hacked up voltage, no longer 'clean'. This is why some bulbs will buzz or hum when operated on a dimmer, but will be quiet when operated using a regular on-off switch.

Further complicating matters, bulbs that are not incandescent, such as CFL, low voltage halogen, and now LED bulbs, often are not compatible with a simple Triac dimmer. These non-traditional bulbs may not dim smoothly, may flicker, buzz or even overheat internally if used with an incompatible dimmer.

There are special Electronic Low Voltage, Magnetic Transformer Low Voltage, and other dimmer switch designs which produce more controlled waveforms. These typically cost more, and often enough are not widely stocked on retail shelves.

I do not have actual numbers on hand, but my understanding is that a dimmed incandescent bulb is even more energy inefficient compared to a dimmed LED or even CFL.

Incandescent bulbs have maximum efficiency (such as it is) at full voltage and brightness. As the power is dialed back, brightness and efficiency go down faster. 50% brightness uses much more than 50% energy for an incandescent bulb.

With LED Lamps I would expect the relationship between power consumed and brightness to be more linear as the lamp is dimmed.

This video clip shows a basic Triac dimmer wavefirm as the dimmer is turned from minimum up to full brightness, then back down.

At the 30 second mark, and again at the end, you can see the smooth sine wave voltage shape that is how power arrives at your home, and what goes to the bulb when it is fully turned on (or through a simple on-off switch).

In between you can see the truncated and somewhat tortured waveform as the Triac 'slices' each half wave.

[video:youtube]http://youtu.be/bB8EAIPAMQc[/video]

This article illustrates some of the factors at play when using and retro fitting LED lighting.

Some well presented info from Lutron

Much more technical LED dimming article

An incandescent light uses 80% power at 50% dimmed.

Evaluating LED, CFL, and incandescent lamps for turn-on time, warm-up time, and dimming performance

Yep. I try never to dim incandescents...

They're an older and more expensive design. You can see from the heat sinks, alone, that they mean business. Rated service life is 50,000 hours, versus 15,000 hours for many A19-style LED bulbs. There are several ways you might talk about the light quality.

Color temperature: pretty much spot on at 2700K, versus some halogen reflector bulbs I have nearby. The halogens are a hair more pink-ish and the LED bulbs are a hair more green-ish. (I.e., same color temperature, slightly different hue).

Color quality: these LR6's are rated with an 80 CRI. That's not as good as many of the newer lights, but Cree also offers better CRI on its newer lights. One clever thing about the Cree is that, inside, they've got more than one LED color and apparently there's a feedback circuit to adjust the red-to-blue balance to ensure that the output light quality stays good even if the light is dimmed or as it ages.

Visibility: the Crees have a fancy system of diffusers and such between the LEDs and the front of the fixture. This means you never see sharp points of light from the individual LEDs. The overall feel is very much like what you'd expect from a traditional frosted incandescent bulb.

If I were buying today, I'd shop around at the various alternatives in the same space. I'd also probably get some "100W-equivalent" rather than "60W-equivalent" lights. I have two of the former and most of the latter. There are a couple places in the house where more light would be sometimes useful.

One last bonus of the Cree parts: they're "damp rated". You can stick one right above your shower or outdoors under your entryway.

Thanks for the feedback, Dan.

One more thing: did you find these to be easy to install?

The hard part was removing the old surrounds, cheap spring-loaded crap that the builder installed. Once that was done, installing the lights themselves was very simple, except for a few of the fixtures over bathtubs, where getting the ladder situated properly was more challenging.

Note that some of the newer Cree bulbs come not with a traditional Edison screw but instead with a GU24. They include a GU24 base with bare leads and some wire splices alongside the bulb. You'll want a basic wire cutter and pliers to do the modification.

Last week I stopped by Home Depot and picked up two Cree soft white 100W-equivalents (model A21). I had two specific spots in mind to put them: one in the back porch light, which casts a surprisingly dim light, and the other in the laundry room, where we never seem to have enough light for folding clothes and looking through cleaning products.

After installing the bulbs, they did not disappoint. The bulb in back lights up most of the back yard now, whereas before I couldn't see past about 8-10 feet. The bulb in the laundry room might be TOO bright, but it's good to have there.

I have to admit, as I was standing on the step ladder to reach the laundry room bulb (we have high ceilings), it struck me that I would probably never change that bulb again. That light is on for perhaps 3 hours per week at most, so that bulb is probably going to last longer than the house its self.

I now have my eyes set on replacing the garage bulbs with Cree A21s. The garage ceilings are about 10-11 feet high, so it would be nice to never have to change those bulbs again either. We also need more light in there at night.

I just have two criticisms of these bulbs, one for Home Depot and one for the bulbs themselves:

Home Depot: seriously, I get that these bulbs are great and that you're trying to push them pretty hard, but you need to get these onto your shelves immediately. Stop sticking them in cardboard standups around the store floor. I checked ahead of time to see if my local store had the A21 soft white bulbs in stock (their site said they had 120 of them), but when I got there I simply couldn't find them. The people at the info desk didn't know, and they had to get someone from electrical to point out that there were additional cardboard standups in the electrical wiring aisle, where there are no other light bulbs. I was about to walk off with two A21 bulbs when I realized that they were the daylight models (I hate the color on those), and I had to get them to bring a box of the soft whites down from the high shelves. I'm sure this will all work its self out when these bulbs get more commonplace, but I really wish they'd all be put in the same place.

The complaint I have about the A21 model itself is that they're very heavy. I get that incandescent 100W bulbs are larger than 60-75W bulbs, but these seem a good deal heavier than the Cree A19 bulbs. It made me slightly worried about putting it in the laundry room fixture, which is the kind with a glass bowl you remove and the light is hanging horizontally, held up by nothing more than the socket. I think it'll be fine, but I doubt that socket was designed with that weight in mind...


One last note: I'm thrilled to see that Home Depot and/or Cree seem to be really getting behind the product. My local Home Depot had at least 10 boxes of A19 bulbs, holding around 48 bulbs in each box. They're well stocked!

This may be of interest.

tanstaafl.

Dan, where do you find those Cree downlights? All I see at HD are Ecosmart products, which appear to be rebranded Crees or just some other brand that uses Cree components and slaps their own name on them. Cree should bring those under the same branding as the rest of their bulbs.

BTW, the Cree commercials are great. Broyles ...I mean Lance Reddick is great in it.



To be honest, my response is "meh?" I don't really care if the whites aren't whiter, the light from these bulbs looks good to me. And they'll improve over time. We're always seeing better color accuracy.

When I bought them, I was buying from some semi-skeezy Internet retailers. The Cree LR6 was never really meant for home use. The marketing was pointing at commercial installations that ran 24/7. The Cree CR6, however, was and is widely distributed through Home Depot, rebranded under their in-house "EcoSmart" brand. (I believe.)

The 2nd-gen LR6 is much brighter than the 1st-gen (1000 lumens vs. 650 lumens) and is seemingly priced to match (roughly $0.10/lumen, then as now). I've used shopping.google.com to hunt around. The cheapest supplier is somebody I've never heard of, but well, there you go.

The 2nd-gen CR6 has better price per lumen (800 lumens for ~$60) and you can get it from Amazon (via a third-party seller), among others.

If you poke around Cree's web site, you'll see many, many variations on their products, including replacements for fluorescent tube fixtures, things you can put in 4" ceiling cans, etc. The "architectural" products are the most amazing, putting out thousands of lumens. I assume they're intended for things like atrium lobbies.

Yeah, HD still sells them. I'd like Cree to bring it under their own branding to help reduce confusion. Plus I think HD is putting a little more of a markup on them than Cree might, but I suppose the price makes some amount of sense. What I don't understand is why the 4" models are almost twice as much as the 6" models.

At the moment, I don't see any way I could replace all the downlights in my home with these things. After a rough count off the top of my head, I have 40 recessed lights all over my house. That would mean at least $1K to replace all of them, and I'm sure I have some 4" cans in the mix.


Neat! Thanks for mentioning that. I see that they have some halogen spot light replacements, which we have in a fixture over our kitchen island. I didn't see the ceiling fan replacements, though. The only type of bulb in my house that isn't represented by Cree's lineup is the candle type. I have at least 20 of those in five light fixtures (outside sconce, two chandeliers, a couple ceiling fixtures). I'd imagine that those are probably very tough to make, and the ones I've seen so far from other manufacturers look pretty terrible.

I am not a Cree devotee. Yesterday I picked up another six A19 60W equivalent bulbs and put them in.

The tricky/expensive part of going LED for me is that not all ZWave switches work with them. The cheap switches I put in my house just go nuts when trying to handle LED bulbs, and can't even turn them off.

So, I'll be slowly replacing some of my automation switches with better models (ones with neutral wires) and I'm starting with places where the lights are on the most. We keep some outdoor lights on during the night for safety, so I expect to see energy savings there pretty quickly. At ~10-11 hours per night, we should recoup the cost of the bulbs in well under a year (and the cost of the new switch in about 3 years ).

In other places, I took advantage of the lower heat output we discussed further up. The two fixtures in our garage are rated for 60-75W bulbs, but I've put two Cree 100W eq. in there and now when I go into the garage at night I have a fantastic amount of light. I love it.

The two bulb types which I want and which aren't quite ready for prime time yet: 50W halogen MR-16 floods and 30+W candle bulbs.

There's a huge amount of action in the LED bulb industry on the MR-16 front, but only the very, very expensive ones are truly "equivalent" to a halogen MR-16 at 50W. There's surprisingly little action on the candle-bulb front, which is what you need for most ceiling fans. I bought some Philips LED candle bulbs ("180 lumens") and they're just not bright enough as well as having an odd pink color.

Meanwhile, yes it's pricey to buy something like the CR6 or LR6, but for us, they were the solution to an ugly problem. Our second story ceiling is also the floor of the attic, with a foot of blown fiberglass insulation. The fixtures have auto-shut-off when they get hot. Incandescent bulbs would never stay on for more than a minute. CFL bulbs take too long to warm up. LED bulbs? Perfect.